Life with Ava

We had a rough week and I'm glad it's finally Friday. What with daycare, her 12 month checkup, and teething I have to say that Ava has been a real champ through it all.

Today was a little better in some aspects and not so much in others. She was much calmer when we went into her room at daycare and let me put her down with another baby (and rubber duckys) with minimal fuss. She only started crying as I was leaving and the decibel level was a bit lower than on Wednesday. She was absolutely thrilled to see me at noon and lit up like a Christmas tree when she turned and saw me standing there. She came to me as quickly as she could, leaned into me for a cuddle, and just laughed and laughed as we were gathering her things and getting ready to leave.

The negatives right now are that she won't take a bottle from anyone there (so she's drinking very little during the morning) and she won't nap. I think there are a couple of reasons why she won't sleep - much more activity than she's used to and she's still in a state of high alert while she's there. I hope both of these problems resolve themselves shortly and I figure they will when she gets thirsty/sleepy enough.

She's especially velcro-y to me after a morning at daycare and even more so now that she's teething so we're making sure to have extra fun daddy time. Today we went on a short hike by the water after a quick trip to Babies-r-us, where I'm comparing strollers, and she (and we) had a blast. Well, she had a blast once she got over being weirded out by tree bark (it's those sensory issues I've talked about). We have lots of pictures to post soon.

Back to the stroller thing:

I have a McLaren Triumph umbrella stroller but I've quickly figured out that it's not really substantial enough to be used all the time - not much seat padding and it's really too big and not very comfortable for her. I'm leaning toward the Inglesina Zippy or the Peg Perego Pliko P3 but I can't decide which would be better - this isn't helped by the fact that I can't find an Inglesina anywhere around here so I would be ordering it sight unseen. Anybody have any experiences with either of these or a recommendation for a good (and somewhat stylish) mid sized stroller?